Reach Beyond What you Know -- Don't Create Your Own Ceiling

Based on our past experiences, we all decide what our limit will be -- this is our imaginary ceiling. We put a cap on our salary, our potential, and what we can expect in every area of life. Then, we work hard to justify the reasons we should stay here, even if those reasons are absurd -- we magnify any benefits from our current rut, and imagine the worst case scenarios when we picture making any changes.

Unfortunately, we place this limit on ourselves based on completely subjective life experiences (painful or pleasant) that leave a lasting effect on how we see the world. This has nothing to do with the world itself, or what is ACTUALLY possible for you and your happiness.

That's a shame, since this explains why most of us do give up on our dreams so easily. "I had a bad audition, so I'm clearly not meant to be an actress," or "I had a mean boss at a big bank, so it's clear all big companies are evil, and I'll only work for start-ups now," or "That last guy was a huge jerk and deeply hurt me, so I'm going to just have kids on my own -- forget men," or "It's impossible to live in a big city, because my job right now doesn't pay all that much," or "I cancelled my last gym membership, so I'll never be athletic, so why not eat chips all night?"

This is what we ALL do, in at least some areas of our lives. 1 (or a few) bad things happened = FIRM belief that I WILL NEVER AGAIN do XYZ. Even though XYZ is really what you DO need to do, to become happy.

Neuroscience has found that we throw out most of our every-day-memories. You won't recall how many times you opened your refrigerator today, or turned on a light switch -- we throw out this boring data. Instead we keep only the most painful or pleasant memories, which are stored in our brains as sort of "file." When we pull up this file, particularly strong emotional memories have not only facts stored, but an attached emotional file.

Sort of like if every time you opened an excel document of your expenses, automatically a very sad song would start blasting, such as Radiohead's "Creep." If you couldn't think of an excel file without being overwhelmed with this sad song, would you EVER want to work on your personal finances? Forget it! That file would stay closed. You'd say things like "I'd rather not talk about my excel file. I had a lot of Starbucks charges I'm sad about." You would certainly associate a sense of sadness with your expenses. This is how we store vivid memories -- facts plus emotion.

It's proven that 60-90 seconds is the length of time it takes a person to jump into this emotional state. When someone brings up the topic, "Hey Jane, how are your personal finances going? Did you ever make an excel file?" Jane might begin talking as normal, "Yes, I started making a list of everything," but as she becomes overwhelmed with the attached emotional file, she'll feel that sadness flooding over her, and stop the conversation, "Anyway, my finances are boring, how have you been?" Or, she'll begin a rant about the terrible problems with excel or personal finance in general.

When you observe people doing the above, that's what's going on. They're repaying old files. No new info is going through their minds.

The problem? Emotional blocks prevent us from taking new action. The kind of action that is necessary for happiness, success, and personal growth.

Another problem is, these emotional "records" color how we see the world. When not properly dealt with, they create emotional blocks that prevent us from exploring the world or seeing things accurately -- or even from asking the question "what's out there for me?"

How likely is it that Jane is going to really dive into her personal finance Excel project, when it has such a strong feeling of sadness attached to it? Not likely! She'll probably "never get around to it." This will create a larger problem for her, when she realizes she lacks savings down the line, which will only create more sad emotional files. With enough sad emotional files, she'll ultimately become flooded and overwhelmed and may fall into a depression.

A lot of our population is depressed (or anxious) and this is often why. Poor file management. There is a process for working through emotions (in the present moment) or going back into past memories to fully understand and release these memories. But to do so, we need to walk TOWARDS the emotion, open that file, see what's there, ask "what is the message from this pain?" FEEL the pain, and only then can we stamp that file with a new file name. We can save it as something fresh. We can add a lesson to it, so it's helpful in the future. We can change the negative thoughts to supportive ones.

Jane can feel her sadness and self-loathing for all of the Starbucks lattes she ran up in the last year, feel that pain, get the message from her pain, "I should have done better, and I'm mad at myself," and then take the lesson. "I'll be more responsible this year. I'll make my own coffee most days." And then she can open her excel document easily, without anxiety.

This is ALL very changeable. But most of us are NOT taught the process for managing these files. It's something I help my clients to do every day, in between talking about action plans, I have clients pull out these emotional files, feel them for only a few seconds, and then we find the lesson, rename the file, and they're gone for good.

But most of us who don't know this knowledge, or the intricate way to actually work through the process ourselves, or who don't have a life coach -- which is most of the population, will find ourselves staying in RUTS. This is why.

We stay in our safe rut while replaying these old memories, which further convince us that the world isn't safe. We use the argument, "But this has been my experience," even though that argument makes no sense. One (or several) bad experiences shouldn't mean ending your quest for happiness, love, success, or fulfillment, but sadly, most of us do give up, due to not knowing how to properly manage these intense emotional files stored in our brains.

When you feel depressed, you're in the middle of repaying an old file. If you can figure out which one, you'll then realize you have a file to manage. When properly dealt with, you can release the emotion attached to the file, and then logically decide if your old "truth" is true anymore. This means you CAN CHANGE. This is huge.

Whenever you hear someone say something like, "When I was young," or "big companies are always..." or "I would never go back to doing..." it means they are running a file with an intense emotion attached. This is why older people repeat the same stories again and again -- and younger people do as well.

The problem? We're completely wrong.

We can only see what's a few inches from our noses when we do this. We forget the vast world beyond us, full of personal power and ways we can achieve our goals and dreams. To reach beyond the stars, we must KNOW that something EXISTS beyond the stars -- and we can't know this is we are recycling our old painful (or pleasant) memories, again, and again, and again.

If you feel you may be blocked, try working through the above process yourself, or contact me for a coaching session. Rates at: www.yourdreamslifecoach.com.